Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.